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With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan's army and police forces. Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials.

U.S. authorities have recovered the remains of two American contractors, the latest grim development in one of the longest-running hostage dramas of the Iraq war.

Vast sums of aid are lost in corporate profits of contractors and sub-contractors, which can be as high as 50 per cent on a single contract. A vast amount of aid is absorbed by high salaries, with generous allowances, and other costs of expatriates working for consulting firms and contractors.

Shell is one of several international oil companies - including BP and the US groups ExxonMobil and Chevron - that have been tapping into Iraq's oil industry by remote control.

U.S. soldiers at a military base in Iraq were provided with treated but untested wastewater for nearly two years by KBR, the giant government contractor, and may have suffered health problems as a result, according to a report released yesterday by the Pentagon's inspector general.

A defense contractor was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison Tuesday for bribing former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham with cash, trips, the services of prostitutes and other gifts in exchange for nearly $90 million in Pentagon work.

Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.

A Pentagon office that was reprimanded by the U.S. Congress for spying on antiwar activists, has just awarded a multi-million dollar contract to QinetiQ, a British company that employs Stephen Cambone. Cambone, a former aide to Donald Rumsfeld, helped create the very office that issued the contract.

In 2005 Blackwater accidentally dropped teargas on US soldiers, which has raised significant new questions about the role of private security contractors in Iraq, and whether they operate under the same rules of engagement and international treaty obligations that the American military observes.

Defense contractor Yamada Corp. provided a total of 400,000 dollars in consultant fees to an executive director of a Japan-U.S. exchange organization between 2003 and 2005.

The Concerned Citizens of Norco (CCN) and Shell Chemical LP (Shell) have engaged in a series of frank and open discussions in an attempt to understand and resolve their differences regarding the Voluntary Property Purchase Program, a program designed to create greenbelt space along the fence lines of the Shell and Motiva Enterprises (Motiva) facilities in Norco, Louisiana that was offered to residents living on two of the four streets that make up the tight-knit and historic Diamond neighborhood. CCN and Shell also discussed the Shell and Motiva Good Neighbor Initiative, which contains several programs to enhance the quality of life for all of Norco, including the Diamond neighborhood.

"It appears that ArmorGroup, by taking on extra staff ... and quickly making some redundant, is essentially transferring the risk inherent in such contract work to employees while making fat profits for itself," his MP, Dr Phyllis Starkey, told the House of Commons earlier this year.

Jamie Leigh Jones was just 20 in 2005 when she took a leap of faith to work in Iraq for her employer, military contractor Kellogg, Brown & Root, then a subsidiary of Halliburton. She went on a mission she believed in. Shortly after her arrival in Iraq, however, Jones' ambitions were dashed in an alleged gang rape by co-workers.

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